Things To Do in Torquay and Beyond

The Gleneagles sat on the south-west coast of England, surrounded by beautiful countryside and some of Europe's finest coastline. Its guest guide to the area still works as well as it did when the concierge handed it over — here it is, preserved and brought up to date.

Start at the Cove

From the hotel's grounds, a private pathway led through eight acres of woodland to the South Devon stretch of the coast path, and onwards to the popular shingle cove of Anstey's Cove — famously favoured by Agatha Christie for picnics during her Torquay years. The path is still there, even if the hotel is not, and the South West Coast Path remains the single best free attraction in the bay: follow it in either direction for clifftop views, wildflowers and a procession of beaches.

Beaches

• Anstey's Cove and Redgate Beach — the coves directly below the old hotel; shingle, sheltered, and quietly beautiful.
• Meadfoot Beach — a long, elegant curve a short walk around the headland.
• Oddicombe and Babbacombe — red-cliff beaches reached by Babbacombe's famous cliff railway.
• Abbey Sands, Preston Sands and Paignton — the big family sands along the inner bay.
• Goodrington Sands — home to a waterpark and safe, shallow swimming.

Within Torbay

The bay packs a remarkable amount in. Kents Cavern, ten minutes' walk from Wellswood, is one of Europe's most important prehistoric cave systems — humans have sheltered there for tens of thousands of years. Paignton Zoo is one of the country's leading conservation zoos, and the Paignton & Dartmouth Steam Railway still runs heritage trains along the coast to Kingswear, where the ferry crosses to Dartmouth. Babbacombe Model Village, an enduring favourite since 1963, recreates England in miniature with a wit Basil Fawlty would have failed to appreciate. And the historic fishing village of Brixham, with its working harbour and replica of Drake's Golden Hind, anchors the southern end of the bay.

Day Trips

The Gleneagles' guide pointed guests further afield, and the recommendations stand. Exeter, with its great Gothic cathedral, and Plymouth, with its naval history and waterfront aquarium, are each within an hour. Inland rises Dartmoor National Park — ponies, granite tors and wide brown moorland, the landscape that supplied Conan Doyle with a hound. For gardeners, the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan lie over the Cornish border, a comfortable day's outing.

The Agatha Christie Mile

Torquay is the birthplace of the world's best-selling novelist, and the town has marked an "Agatha Christie Mile" along the seafront taking in her birthplace district, the grand seafront hotel where she honeymooned, and the clifftop hotel thinly disguised in several of her novels. Torquay Museum keeps the largest public collection of Christie material in the world. The official estate at agathachristie.com maintains the wider story; her holiday home at Greenway, on the River Dart, is now in the care of the National Trust and reachable by steam train and ferry — perhaps the best single day out in South Devon.

Evenings

Torquay's nightlife runs from harbourside cocktail bars to theatre on the seafront. In the Gleneagles' day, of course, the evening's entertainment was frequently in-house — cabaret weekends, dinner dances and comedy nights that guests planned whole holidays around. Those pages are worth a read for the period flavour alone; for the rest, the bay's official guide lists what's on this week. And if you only have one evening, do what the hotel always told its guests: walk down through Wellswood to the harbour as the lights come on, and have dinner where you can see the water.